LILITH FAIR POPULARITY MORE THAN EQUAL; FEMALE-DOMINATED PACKAGE TOUR ENJOYS STRONG BUZZ, SELLOUT CROWDS.

Byline: Jon Pareles The New York Times

Like a lot of good ideas, the Lilith Fair already seems inevitable. Sooner or later, someone was bound to put together two 1990s phenomena: the surging commercial fortunes of female songwriters and the summer package tour as reinvented by the Lollapalooza festival.

But it took a musician, Canadian songwriter Sarah McLachlan, to come up with the Lilith Fair, a showcase of 10 female songwriters. Lilith's tour started in George, Wash., on Saturday with a sold-out show at the Gorge, a 20,000-seat natural amphitheater overlooking the Columbia River, 150 miles east of Seattle.

``If I hadn't done it, somebody else would have,'' McLachlan said in an interview. ``But it was a selfish thing. I never got to see the people I love, playing live.''

For decades, the music business clung to arbitrary ideas about female performers. Until recently, pop radio programmers believed they would lose listeners if they played two female singers in a row, until that shibboleth was demolished by 1990s hits from Alanis Morissette, Celine Dion, Erykah Badu, No Doubt and the Spice Girls, among many others.

Similarly, concert promoters believed that bands featuring women should not appear together. Yet the Lilith Fair already has sold out its first week of shows - near Portland, San Francisco and at Irving Meadows. All the shows are being filmed for a prospective documentary.

Industry darling

Gary Bongiovanni, the editor of the weekly concert-business trade magazine Pollstar, said that in a summer overrun by package tours, promoters are uniformly optimistic about the Lilith Fair. With 32 dates in July and August, its itinerary is comparable to the hard-rock and hip-hop-centered Lollapalooza and the neo-hippie Horde festival, while its advance ticket sales have been stronger.

``Women musicians have been marginalized, ghettoized and stereotyped,'' said Carla DeSantis, editor and publisher of Rockgrl magazine, which is devoted to female performers. ``The high ticket sales of Lilith Fair over most of the other, testosterone-dominated festivals illustrates that there's a market.''

The Lilith Fair is named after a woman who, in Jewish folklore, was Adam's first wife, but was expelled from the Garden of Eden when she refused to subordinate herself to her husband. McLachlan called Lilith ``the world's first feminist.'' Although Lilith herself went on to become vindictive, demonic and lethal, the Lilith Fair isn't confrontational or separatist. Instead, it favors kindly voices that conciliate far more than they complain or attack. In her set's finale, McLachlan sang, ``Sweet surrender is all that I have to give.''

McLachlan is the only performer appearing throughout the Lilith Fair tour, while 51 other women and their bands - among them Sheryl Crow, Joan Osborne, Mary Chapin Carpenter, Lisa Loeb, Emmylou Harris, the Cardigans, Fiona Apple, Tracy Chapman and the Indigo Girls - are to play between two and 20 shows. McLachlan said that 700 bands featuring women applied for 25 slots on two auxiliary stages.

The McLachlan group

The Lilith shows don't try to present a comprehensive survey of women making music. They reflect McLachlan's taste, concentrating on guitar-strumming, melody-loving songwriters rooted in folk, pop and country music. There are no rhythm 'n' blues groups crooning come-ons, no punky riot grrrls, no rappers and little hard rock. The main-stage headliners of the first Lilith show - McLachlan, Tracy Chapman, Jewel, Paula Cole and Suzanne Vega - are all pop-folk songwriters who, despite distinct styles, could also be a chapter of the Joni Mitchell fan club.

In an audience where women outnumbered men by about 3 to 1, the atmosphere was conspicuously different from most outdoor shows: more considerate, less boisterous. From the stage, performers marveled at how attentive listeners were. There were cheers not just for hit songs, but for lines about self-determination and about dumping bad partners.

The main-stage performers shared no party line. McLachlan's songs envision love as both salve and salvation; they are confident that enough devoted affection will heal anything. But she has scaled up her intimate promises to arena-sized melodramas, moving closer to the likes of Celine Dion. Her songs were less overblown when she performed solo to start the afternoon's music on a small stage.

Vega sang imperturbable character studies, as a sling-wielding David warning Goliath in ``Rock in This Pocket'' or a fallen girl confessing to her mother in ``Bad Wisdom.'' Paula Cole played identity crises as narcissistic extravaganzas, pining for an old-fashioned strong silent type in ``Where Have All the Cowboys Gone'' and tearing at her own insecurities in ``Me.''

Jewel is on the way to growing into her extraordinary voice, which can mimic singers from Linda Ronstadt to Rickie Lee Jones to Bob Dylan; in Lilith's only homage to a foremother, Jewel sang Patti Smith's ``Dancing Barefoot'' while wearing high heels. Tracy Chapman delivered blunt cliches (``We can break the chain'') over sturdy reggae rhythms, in a voice that promised comfort despite long odds.

Potpourri of performers

The auxiliary stages offered more variety: Lauren Hoffman's quiet but barbed songs, Kinnie Starr's free-associative poetry melting into tunes and Cassandra Wilson's sultry, jazzy singing over her band's slide-guitar twang. Leah Andreone and Mudgirl also performed.

Musicians that would have provided more diversity - among them the alternative rock band Garbage and the dance music experimenter Bjork - declined Lilith because they were working on albums or tired of touring, McLachlan said. Others, she added, may have looked at the prospective lineup and decided they wouldn't fit in. She said next year's Lilith Fair might also include male songwriters.

The Lilith Fair sought to employ women behind the scenes. The tour's accountant and its head of merchandising are both women, and a few women worked among the stage crew, sound engineers and spotlight operators. McLachlan said that while the tour could have financed itself without corporate sponsors, it accepted tie-ins in order to raise $600,000 for female-oriented charities. Lilith Fair is also donating $1 per ticket to a nonprofit organization in each city it visits; at the Gorge, McLachlan presented $19,500 to the Domestic Abuse Women's Network.

As performers come and go on the Lilith Fair tour, its strictly musical quality will vary. But its value as a symbol of women's achievements and solidarity is already undeniable. As Lilith began, both performers and audience were clearly enjoying the symbolism along with the music.

The facts

Who: Lilith Fair, with Sarah McLachlan, Tracy Chapman, Jewel, Paula Cole, Suzanne Vega and others.

Where: Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre, 8800 Irvine Center Drive, Laguna Hills.

When: 3:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Tickets: Sold out, try brokers.

CAPTION(S):

6 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Not for Women Only; Sarah McLachlan began the Lilith Fair as an answer to the male-dominated music festivals, but she denies being a separatist

(2--Cover--Color) Jewel

(3--Cover--Color) Paula Cole

(4) Canadian singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan, creator of the Lilith Fair, performing Saturday at the festival's opening date in George, Wash.

(5) Main-stage performer Paula Cole during Saturday's George, Wash., show.

(6) Jazz singer Cassandra Wilson, with bassist Lonnie Plaxico, on an auxiliary stage at the Lilith Fair's Washington state debut.

The New York Times